SIC 3952 Lead Pencils, Crayons and Artists' Materials

Contenidos

• NAICS CODE(S).
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SIC 3952

This category includes establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing lead pencils, pencil leads, and crayons, and materials and equipment for artwork, such as airbrushes, drawing tables and boards, palettes, sketch boxes, pantographs, artists colors and waxes, pyrography goods, drawing inks, and drafting materials. Establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing mechanical pencils are classified in SIC 3951: Pens, Mechanical Pencils, and Parts, and those manufacturing drafting instruments are classified in SIC 3829: Measuring and Controlling Devices, Not Elsewhere Classified.

NAICS CODE(S)

337127

Institutional Furniture Manufacturing

325998

All Other Miscellaneous Chemical Product Manufacturing

339942

Lead Pencil and Art Good Manufacturing

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 143 establishments primarily producing pencils and art supplies in the early 2000s. A work force of 6,000 generated the industry's $1.5 billion in shipments. General-use pencils, in particular, serve a mature and possibly declining market as computers and other electronic devices continue to serve such traditional school and office functions as test taking and mathematical calculation.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the majority of the industry's sales, about 57 percent, came from chalkboards. Lead pencils and art goods made up an additional 19 percent, artists' equipment made up 14 percent, and the remaining 10 percent of sales came from miscellaneous related goods. In the mid-2000s 46 percent of the total amount spent on writing instruments was spent on pencils, of which wood encased pencils were the largest category.

The Smithsonian Institution estimated that America's 100 billionth pencil was produced in 1976, and by the early 1990s, U.S. companies produced the seven-inch-long, two-for-a-quarter writing utensils at the rate of 2.5 billion per year.

The image of pencils was tarnished in 1971, when a child who chewed pencils was found to have lead poisoning, and the media blamed the pencil "lead." Even though pencils were made with graphite, not lead, the story pushed the industry to start a product certification program open to any pencil manufacturer.

In 1988, Congress passed the Labeling of Hazardous Art Materials Act, which required that all art materials be reviewed to determine the potential for causing a chronic hazard and that appropriate warning labels be placed on those materials. The...